In a Nutshell Newsletter 27th November: Advent Spiral

Huge praise for Willow Class going on their first school trip last week to Wimbledon’s Buddhist Temple. All the staff were so proud of how respectful you were to the Buddhist monks and how considerately you behaved in a religious site. Well done. We can’t wait to go on more school trips with you now!

Birch Class have made great progress with their writing this term, not only the quantity and quality of their writing, but their presentation, too. It is very impressive to see Year 3 children writing in cursive handwriting with such care and attention given to their work. What’s more, it was lovely to see the class enjoying nostalgic Kinde soup, made by one of the parents, on Friday lunchtime – how far they have come from those Kinde days…

Chestnut Class have been tackling short division with remainders, which demands quick application of all times tables. Our new times table homework booklets will be helping with that! In Literacy, students have been improving their writing by learning how to use relative clauses effectively and in Humanities, we’ve been finding out what tricks Loki gets up to!

Oak Class became really interested in last terms’ topic, World War I, but by the look of things, they are enjoying their new topic, Our Wonderful World, just as much. They’ve begun by making their own scaled version of the Earth, creating the different layers underneath the surface with a mixture of bicarbonate soda and cornflour.

Willow Class

We talked about hibernation – what is it? Who does it? Concluding that it is a winter sleep, and hedgehogs are one of the hibernating animals. Making teasel hedgehogs followed, as well as peeling and sawing sticks, mud kitchen and mud painting activities, and we ended with two children using the fire-steel to light fairy fires in scallop shells.

Birch Class 

‘The Dragon head is gone! ‘ – the craggy half-rotted mass of fallen willow trunk still gets a lot of interest, providing sawdust soup this week. After examining some sections of elder wood, thinking of how it’s core can be hollowed out and what that could be good for, one student tried to make a flute, but adapted this challenging plan to a fishing rod, complete with spool and a long line to cast. Lots of stories were shared as we whittled and sawed.

Chestnut and Oak Classes

There was just an hour for outdoor time after the Buddhist Temple visit, so they began with vigorous tree-climbing, moving on to den-making, their own balancing games, and a good chat about the concept of animism along with tea at the end.